Overcrowding in prisons will not be solved by building new facilities, Correctional Services Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula said during debate on her budget vote in the National Assembly on Thursday.

While this could be part of the interventions, the real solution lay in the success of the rehabilitation programmes, the managed release and reintegration of offenders, and the integration processes within the criminal justice system, she said.

An independent ministerial task team had been appointed to conduct an audit of various categories of inmates.

This was with a view to determining their status regarding appearances before parole boards, reclassification of sentences, application of bail protocol, and the conversion of custodial sentences into correctional supervision.

The team would also audit the status of vulnerable inmates, including the elderly, inmates with psychiatric problems, children, and women, Mapisa-Nqakula said.

"With this data at our disposal, it should be possible for us to implement provisions in the law in terms of the release of those inmates who remain in our facilities on minor crimes with bail amounts of less than R1 000, and those who are first time offenders serving sentences of less than 24 months.

"We will also be able to deal with cases of those who, in terms of the 1959 Act, have served the requisite period of their sentence allowing for their reclassification, but are yet to appear before the parole boards for the consideration of individual cases," she said.

The department had also decided to procure four new public-private partnership (PPP) facilities. Mapisa-Nqakula confirmed that former national commissioner Xoliswa Sibeko's contract, which was to have expired in August, had been "redetermined to end at an earlier date".

Sibeko had been informed of this and her contract had been paid out in full.

The department had already advertised to fill the vacancy, she said.